Dominic Sandbrook

And basically they end up huddling for hours together, kind of underneath the Austrian barbed wire.

They can't get through it.

They can't go back.

They're kind of stuck.

They all run out of ammo and their captain says, I think we should just make a breakthrough.

We should try to sneak away.

And so they start to sneak away.

The first four men who try to sneak away are all shot straight away.

Actually, let's not sneak away.

This is a really bad idea.

So they basically just stay there under the Austrian wire until darkness comes.

And then when darkness comes, and the Austrians have kind of gone to bed or whatever, they managed to stumble down the hill.

And Bonamore says in his diary, what a massacre.

How many young lives wasted.

It's raining nonstop and we lie in the bottom of a ravine to spend the night amid the water and the cold.

And the amazing detail about all this, about these battles, that always sticks in my mind.

It's very unusual in the story of the First World War.

There are loads of stories about the Austrians saying to the Italians...

Go back.

We won't shoot at you.